I'm Opposed to Saturn...We All Are at the Moment
At the end of May 2015 Saturn is at opposition which gives us the best and brightest view of it all year.
Here's a lousy afocal astrovideo I took of Saturn through my 9mm eyepiece and 8" Zhumell reflector telescope on May 23, 2015. The actual view was much better than the cheap cellphone could convey.
A cheap telescope will show you at least the ring, which with even the cheapest binoculars on a tripod will look like Mickey Mouse ears. Early astronomers thought it might be a moon on each side. I thought, "how could a ring look like two moons?" but I went out with cheap binoculars and lo and behold! It did look like a big circle with two smaller circular 'ears'.
A small 40mm tasco type should still let you see something. Jupiter is even easier because its bigger and almost straight west to the right of the moon.
Here's another video with a 2x barlow attached to the 9mm eyepiece, making it a 4.5mm with higher magnification.
More zoomed in but darker and less crisp focus. Such is the physics of optics and light.
A great free phone app for astronomy is SkEye...which you'll need because the planets move around quite a bit (planet is Greek for "wanderer").
I also feel elated after getting some cosmic photons in my eyeballs.
Good night and clear skies to you!
A small 40mm tasco type should still let you see something. Jupiter is even easier because its bigger and almost straight west to the right of the moon.
Here's another video with a 2x barlow attached to the 9mm eyepiece, making it a 4.5mm with higher magnification.
More zoomed in but darker and less crisp focus. Such is the physics of optics and light.
A great free phone app for astronomy is SkEye...which you'll need because the planets move around quite a bit (planet is Greek for "wanderer").
I also feel elated after getting some cosmic photons in my eyeballs.
"The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed."
-Teilhard de Chardin
Good night and clear skies to you!
